Evangelical publisher Tyndale House is expanding its health and wellness titles with a new imprint, Refresh, led by the executive publisher for nonfiction Jan Long Harris. With the tagline “Think Well, Live Well. Be Well,” Refresh will release six to eight titles a year, beginning this fall, featuring books from researchers, experts and practitioners in medicine, science, psychology, religion, nutrition, fitness, and lifestyle improvement—all with a Christian viewpoint, according to the publisher.
Several new lifestyle imprints have been announced in the last two weeks. HarperCollins Focus announced its gift and lifestyle imprint Celebrate and Simon & Schuster announced the upcoming launch of Simon Element offering lifestyle and “practical nonfiction” titles. Both are aimed at general market readers with similarly upbeat approaches to home, health, and happiness topics. They’re meant to be inspiring without veering into spiritualty turf.
Not so for Tyndale Refresh, which will be “more than a lifestyle imprint,” Harris told PW. “A basic assumption of the imprint is that God cares about us mind, body, and soul. Some Refresh books will focus more on the mind, some more on the body, and some more on the soul, but all will assume that the three are related. Tyndale Refresh books will be valuable to people of strong faith and no faith, but they will be unapologetic in affirming that faith is a healthy and essential part of balanced wellness.”
The imprint launches in September with two titles —Food Saved Me: My Journey of Finding Health and Hope through the Power of Food a memoir by bestselling cookbook author and health advocate Danielle Walker (Eat What You Love) and Believing is Seeing: A Physicist Explains How Science Shattered His Atheism and Revealed the Necessity of Faith by physicist Michael Guillen, the former ABC News science editor.
Books on health, wellness, psychology, and science that were previously published under the Tyndale Momentum imprint, including titles by popular authors such as Daniel Amen, Curt Thompson, Stephen Arterburn, and Alisa Keeton, will be rebranded with Tyndale Refresh when they are reprinted.
Tyndale Momentum carries on with Sarah Atkinson promoted from associate publisher to publisher, reporting to Ron Beers, senior v-p of Tyndale Books. With the formation of Refresh, Momentum will primarily publish in religion categories such as Christian living, spiritual formation, spiritual memoir, and devotionals. There may be some overlap with Refresh and any editor who acquires for nonfiction can acquire for either imprint, said Harris. According to Atkinson, the coming year will bring “strategic new partnerships, debut authors, compelling true stories, and much more."
